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Motherless Mothers: How Losing a Mother Shapes the Parent You Become

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I lost my mother 7 years ago.
A year and 9 months ago I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy, and I started my most difficult and most sad year of my life.
At some point I thought to myself- I lost my mom. I lost my dad. Those were 2 huge turning points in my life. I thought I could over come everything! And here is this little baby, making me feel like I'm the weakest person on the face of the earth! What the.... ???

And then I bought Hope's second book- Motherless mothers.
I got it exactly one year after my boy was born, and then I started to understand everything.
This book helped me make peace with the dreadful year I had, where I felt my parents died all over again and instead of being over joyed with my son, I felt heart broken for the loss of my parents, for the loss of my family. It was so overwhelming that it completely shadowed the fact that my new family was just born.

This is the book that made me understand myself a whole lot better.
My Inner Peace Book.
Thank you Hope, for helping me become a better mother!

"Motherless Mothers" is a beautifully written, insightful book for all women who have lost mothers, and struggle with the uncertainties of rearing their own children. Hope Edelman not only answers the vital questions new mother have, but creates a community so that motherless mothers don't feel isolated and without a compass. This book has helped me (and all the women I've given it to) enormously. We owe an deep debt of gratitude to the author for her dedication and bravery. Buy this book!

Motherless Mothers is like a beacon of light for those of us who are one and for those who love us. It guides us through the parenting process from birth to teenage years with information, stories and hard data about what is normal, and what is not, for those of us trying to navigate the parenting waters without that most important person there to teach us, Mom. Just like Motherless Daughters before it, Motherless Mothers is the first book to offer us help, solice and support and to give us a framework to understand ourselves as parents. If you grew up without a Mom and/or didn't have one there for you, Get This Book. Great information and beautifully written!!!

Hope Edelman's book is a powerful read. She puts just the right amount of her personal experience into the book and at the same time guides the reader through the journey of what it means to be a motherless mother. Her beautifully written book caught me off guard, moved me to tears, and most of all made me thankful to be the mother that I am.

My mother died four years ago after a short illness. She was 52 years old. I was half her age, 2 months pregnant, and de-va-sta-ted! At the moment she left me, I hurt, but I pushed through it to ensure her final arrangements were complete that she would be laid to rest properly. After that though, I completely fell apart.

A co-worker gave me her copy of this book when I returned to work a full month after my mother's death. I don't think I started reading this book until I actually had my daughter. There are so many things in this book that have helped to validate what I was feeling and who I became after my loss. I closed myself off to even my closest friends during this time. I was 26, single, an orphan, and I was carrying a child that would never meet the wonderful woman who had raised me. I needed my Mother more than anything at that time and I just didn't see how I would be able to navigate this life, especially Motherhood, without her. Truthfully, in those early days, I wasn't too sure I did care to go on. But Edelman's book helped to give me HOPE. I no longer felt completely alone because here were women who had experienced mother-loss, some many years before I had. And they felt and said things that I had as well, but that I had not been able to put into words to express. I couldn't talk to my friends; how could they understand? My maternal grandmother couldn't deal with my loss and her loss. It was enough for her that she'd lost her youngest daughter. My mother's siblings also had their own hurt. And then there were my own siblings. My older brother, who called mom his "Superwoman" knew to do one thing, and that was protect his sisters. He dealt with his own pain...but quietly, privately. My little sister, only 18, was dealing with her own pain and guilt from not being around while Mom was sick. I was alone...completely...until I read this book and realized that I wasn't crazy for feeling the way I did. All of the ridiculous fears I had weren't so ridiculous anymore. My extreme over-protectiveness no longer seemed as extreme. This book is for any woman, mother or not, who has lost her mother. It truly helped me to understand what I was going through in my own experience.

I've read many books on the loss of a parent (particularly a mother) and none of them touched me like "Motherless Mothers" did. The author clearly knows what she is writing about, and puts in a great deal of personal experiences, but complements this with results from a survey among 1300+ women (if I'm not mistaken) and researched many secondary sources. The result is a book that helps women who lost their mother (at different ages, for different reasons) to understand what they feel, realise that it's normal and okay to have those feelings and makes them understand why they parent like they do. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

Hope Edelman is simply a delicious writer. Her words and experiences offer help and insight to those of us who either lost our mothers or didn't have a strong mother role model. We never learn how to parent, especially if we don't have strong role models. This book is a must have for all of us needing help in the most difficult job of a lifetime. Hope Edelman has become the go to person for all women having mothering issues. She gives us insight, hope and information, sharing her experiences with us. This is a book you will reach for over and over to help you along the mothering pathway. A must have for your library, a wonderful gift for a friend or family member setting out on the incredible journey of motherhood.